Friday, January 26, 2024

Over The Land Freckled With Snow – This Week’s Links

January 26, 2024 Philippines , Pinoy 0 Comments

I’ve read the word ‘snubbed’ too many times this week for it to retain any meaning, and thus there will be no other use of it in this article, unless I forgot this promise at some point after writing this intro on my phone while squeezed onto a packed commuter train, and if that is the case, well, take this week’s links, below, as recompense.

This week’s news.

• Starting our week in the heady world of the executive boardroom, as corporate scuffles abound at The Walt Disney Company, currently waving certain iterations of its core characters off into the land of public domain, with various activist funds looking to leverage seats at the table, arguing for restructuring of the company, while Chief Executive Bob Iger makes the “thank you, but no thank you” play, as Disney continues down the contemporary path, recently trodden by most other media companies, in making a shocked expression when IP churn doesn’t turn out to be an infinite money fountain. Who knew?

• Looking across the waves to France, and the Angoulême International Comics Festival announced this week that Posy Simmonds is the 2024 winner of their Grand Prix, pipping Daniel Clowes and Catherine Meurisse to this year’s post, with Simmonds quoted as being “gobsmacked – époustouflée, as you would say in French” - Cynthia Rose’s recent report from the Pompidou Centre’s exposition “Posy Simmonds, Drawing Literature” for TCJ can be read here.

• Zainab Akhtar’s ShortBox shared that their publishing arm will be closing up shop on the 29th of February, which will be their last day of trading, although the ShortBox Comics Fair will continue, with 2024’s edition taking place across October.

• Tiffany Babb opened applications to a new Comics Criticism Mini Grant for 2024, comprising seven awards of $250 - submissions of links to three pieces of comics criticism work of at least 500 words published in the last year, with blog posts and YouTube videos eligible for this, are being welcomed, with a deadline for applications of February 20th.

• A GoFundMe was launched this week in support of comics writer Brett Lewis, who received an emergency hemicraniectomy due to a brain bleed earlier this month - the treatment will necessitate a stay in an acute rehab facility, 24/7 home care, and a follow-up procedure later this year, with funds going towards covering associated medical bills.

This week’s reviews.

TCJ

• Joe McCulloch reviews the singular placidity of Taiyō Matsumoto’s Tokyo These Days, Volume 1, translated by Michael Arias - “That Shiozawa ascertains a latent quality to comics is what makes him an imaginative and potentially ill-fated Taiyō Matsumoto protagonist. He is a comics maniac. You too are a maniac for reading this, and I am a pervert for writing it.”

• Nicholas Burman reviews the imaginative twists of Zine Panique’s Dark Side of the Food - “Themes can be tricky. Oftentimes magazines and anthologies tend to sort of give up halfway through, but here the concept is taken to its various logical (and illogical) conclusions from beginning to end.”

• Leonard Pierce reviews the goofy sprawl of Zack Soto’s Power Button: The First Invasion - “That is to say: who is best to say whether kids’ comics are good for kids? Obviously, it’s kids. But kids are rarely the ones writing them, illustrating them, publishing them, marketing them, reviewing them, or even buying them. That’s all being done by crummy old adults like me.”

 

AIPT

• David Brooke reviews the satisfying conclusions of DC’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold #9.

• Alex Schlesinger reviews the diverse visuals of Marvel Comics’ X-Men: Hellfire Gala - Fall of X.

• David Canham reviews the deepening mystery of Darcy Van Poelgeest, Caio Filipe, et al’s Lotus Land #3.

• Collier Jennings reviews the creative variety of Image Comics’ Ghost Machine #1.

 

The Beat

• D. Morris reviews the difficult questions of Shiro Moriya’s Soloist in a Cage, Volume 1, translated by Adrienne Beck.

• Joe Grunenwald reviews the conceptual complexity of Simon Spurrier, Mike Deodato Jr., et al’s The Flash #5.

• Tim Rooney reviews the purple prose of Ryan K. Lindsay, Sami Kivelä, et al’s Deer Editor #1.

• Sean Dillon reviews the fascinating ideas of Dave Maass and Patrick Lay’s adaptation of Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann’s Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis.

• Cy Beltran reviews the self-referential start of Al Ewing, Luciano Vecchio, et al’s Resurrection of Magneto #1.

• Samantha Puc reviews the deft examinations of Erin Williams’ What’s Wrong?: Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine.

 

Broken Frontier

• Karen O'Brien reviews the must-read mystery of Kyle Starks, Fran Galán, et al’s Pine & Merrimac #1.

• Lydia Turner reviews the whimsical details of Beastly Worlds’ Fox Flight Market Night.

• Andy Oliver reviews the nuanced portrayals of Molly Stocks’ Convoy.

 

House to Astonish

Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #122, X-Men #30, Invincible Iron Man #14, and Cable #1.

 

Kirkus Reviews

Have starred capsule reviews of:

- The rich layers of Tim Probert’s Lightfall: Book 3 - The Dark Times.

- The fun smackdown of Rebecca Donnelly and Misa Saburi’s Survival of the Fittest.

- The heartfelt conclusion of Hamish Steele’s DeadEndia: The Divine Order.

- The authentic emotions of Beth Fantaskey and ONeillJones’ Wires Crossed.

- The emotional impact of Ricardo Chávez Castañeda and Alejandro Magallanes’ The Book of Denial, translated by Lawrence Schimel.

 

Multiversity Comics

• Robbie Pleasant reviews the enjoyable action of Fabian Nicieza, Scot Eaton, et al’s Cable #1.

• Chris Cole reviews the harsh honesty of Estelle Nadel, Sammy Savos, and Bethany Stout’s The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival.

 

Publisher’s Weekly

Have capsule reviews of:

- The revelatory debut of Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts.

- The dexterous inventiveness of Mia Oberländer’s Anna, translated by Nika Knight.

- The mythic resonance of Leela Corman’s Victory Parade.

 

Solrad

Nicholas Burman reviews the haunting anxiety of Marina Groig’s Si me abres la cabeza, sale humo frio (If You Open My Head, Cold Smoke Comes Out).

 

Women Write About Comics

• Ivy Allie reviews the rich profundity of M.S. Harkness’ Time Under Tension.

• Kayleigh Hearn reviews the impressive deconstruction of Tom King, Elsa Charretier, et al’s Love Everlasting.

This week’s interviews.

TCJ

• Zach Rabiroff interviews Steven Arnold about Perry Midlife and Perry Shitlife, life in Philadelphia, the allure of the punk mindset, and creative collaborations - “I think Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts and The Far Side, are these perfect examples of how to tell a story in either one panel, four panels, or whatever Bill Watterson was doing - however he laid out, especially his Sundays. And that always fascinated me. I mean, as a kid I was more obsessed with animation, the old Disney cartoons, and Looney Tunes, and Rocky and Bullwinkle.”

• William Schwartz interviews KC Green about Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio, having your work become an enduring meme, and finishing working with Comics Kingdom - “I’m just not sure, again, how to proceed with my work at large. If my comics work is even something to worry about any more, or ask for editorial comments on. I just wanna make a bunch of dumbass dick-suckin’ jokes. I can do that without gettin’ an email from my mom telling me to “tone it down.””

 

AIPT

• Chris Hassan speaks with Peach Momoko about Ultimate X-Men, the origins of the project, mutant inspirations, and the joys of drawing X-Men.

• Chris Coplan talks to Matthew Erman and Lonnie Nadler about Golgotha Motor Mountain, taking risks with your creative endeavours, and taking the process seriously.

• David Brooke interviews Rick Remender about Napalm Lullaby, taking your time with a story, and three golden rules for making comics.

 

The Beat

• Diego Higuera chats with Cullen Bunn and Heath Amodio about Copycat, Hollywood connections, and keeping the story grounded.

• Avery Kaplan interviews Stephanie Cooke and Whitney Gardner about The Racc Pack, collaborating through a shared love of critters, and favourite trash.

• Present a conversation with Avery Hill Publishing’s Ricky Miller about highlights from 2023, upcoming projects in 2024, and supporting debut creators.

 

Broken Frontier

Andy Oliver talks to Dave Maass about Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis, discovering the opera behind the comic, and translating one medium to another.

 

Publisher’s Weekly

Meg Lemke speaks with Leela Corman about Victory Parade, the isolating and exhausting nature of trauma, and making art as anti-fascist activism.

 

Yahoo

Rosemary Feitelberg interviews Ai Weiwei about Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir, social media facilitating the collation of one’s life, and wanting to make bad ideas happen.

This week’s features and longreads.

• Here at TCJ, Bob Levin interrogates the discrete evolution of Jesse Reklaw’s memoir comics, namely Couch Tag, Lovf, and Keeping Score - “But it is so damn familiar. It is as if Robert Crumb had established a prototype for future cartoonists to follow. Awful parents, bullying peers, oddball obsessions, off-kilter adolescence - and Bob’s not just your uncle but your father. The ground these memoirs cover is like a drive through Kansas, all flat, unvarying, and, at the end, not a Stuckey’s but a graphic tale.”

• For The Beat, Arpad Okay reports on the Italian and Japanese cartoonists producing tributes to Naji al-Ali’s Handala, created to support ongoing calls for a ceasefire in Palestine, amidst the spreading conflict between Israel and Hamas. Fantagraphics posted a statement in support of a ceasefire in Gaza a few days subsequent.

• Shelfdust’s retrospective of Journey into Mystery returns, as Chad Nevett picks up the baton, examining events from the perspective of a certain Norse god of thunder, and Matt Fraction’s tenure deciding whomst to be worthy of lifting Mjölnir.

• From the world of open-access academia, in Memory Studies, Vasiliki Belia writes on Kate Charlesworth’s Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, examining how the book challenges dominant narratives regarding the relationship between lesbian, queer, and trans feminism.

• A pair of papers from the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, as P Ardhra and Sathyaraj Venkatesan explore the topic of climate grief and resilience through the lens of Brian Fies’ A Fire Story: A Memoir, and how eco-comics can engage with readers on a profound emotional level; and Melissa Eriko Poulsen writes on the agency of mixed race characters as depicted in Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress, and the ways in which the story eschews multiracial narrative tropes emphasising the individual.

• Paul O’Brien’s census of the villains of Daredevil continues, over at House to Astonish, as this week The Masked Marauder bucks the trend by getting an encore.

• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at The Daily Cartoonist, as week four of this election year likely reflects what will be the tone for 2024 as a whole.

This week’s audio/visual delights.

• Deb Aoki hosted this week’s edition of Mangasplaining, as the gang convened to discuss the culture clash collision of Teki Yatsuda’s The Yakuza’s Bias, K-Pop terminology, and the crafting of good gags.

• The latest edition of Publisher’s Weekly’s More to Come saw Heidi MacDonald, Calvin Reid, Kate Fitzsimons, and Meg Lemke looking ahead to some highlights from the spring slate of graphic novels.

• Brian Hibbs was joined by Sarah Burgess, as part of Comix Experience’s Graphic Novel Club, as they discussed Skip!, the joys of double dutch skipping, keeping the finer details spontaneous and having to deviate from that when making a graphic novel, and comics making on an instinctual level.

• A few trips up in the Word Balloon with John Siuntres, who spoke with Mike Perkins and Dan Jurgens about Batman: The First Knight and other projects, Tom King about Wonder Woman and superhero specifics, and Steve Orlando about Scarlet Witch and original art purchases.

• Closing out the week with some more Cartoonist Kayfabe, as Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor discussed BBC4’s documentary Moebius: Redux - A Life in Pictures, Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon #252, a 90s snapshot from Wizard #63, John Byrne and Jim Lee on X-Men #4, Stan Lee and Paul Ryan on Ravager 2099, and the joys of DC/Marvel’s Amalgam Age.

That’s all the links for this week, as they’re playing the music, and so I must stop typing and leave the stage.

The post Over The Land Freckled With Snow – This Week’s Links appeared first on The Comics Journal.


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